Marvel Custom Publishing Archives - Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources

Every hero needs to experience their first team-up, and Anthony Smith, a.k.a. Blue Ear, got to do that this past week. It didn’t start with the typical fight that such meetings usually start with, but then again, this wasn’t a typical team-up.

Last year Anthony’s mom, Christina D’Allesandro, reached out to Marvel after her son Anthony Smith told he wasn’t going to use his hearing aid anymore because “superheroes don’t have blue ears.” Marvel Editor Bill Rosemann responded first with evidence of Hawkeye’s hearing loss in the 1980s and then with artwork by Nelson Ribeiro and Manny Mederos depicting Anthony Smith as the superhero Blue Ear.

The story caught the attention of media and families with hearing-impaired children. It also caught the eye of Phonak, the largest distributor of hearing aids in the world. They worked with Marvel Custom Solutions, which regularly works with companies and organizations to create custom comics, on a poster that’s being distributed to pediatric audiology clinics. Written by Christos Gage and drawn by Paco Medina, the poster features Iron Man and a hearing-impaired boy who just wants to be treated like any other kid.

And this past week, Blue Ear attended an event at the Center for Hearing and Communication to debut the poster — as well as to meet fellow superhero Iron Man.

“When Christina told us about Anthony, she taught us about some of the unique challenges that children who wear hearing aids face,” Rosemann told Marvel.com. “When our friends at Phonak heard about how the Marvel heroes helped him, they realized how together we could help spread the message even further.”

Check out the poster below, and head over to Marvel.com to see more pictures of Blue Ear and Iron Man’s first team-up.

Marvel’s custom-publishing division has teamed with San Francisco-based Benefit Cosmetics to create SpyGal, billed as the “first-ever beauty-inspired comic book hero.” What does “beauty-inspired” mean? In this case, it’s that SpyGal, and her “wise-cracking, pore-zapping persona,” is based on Benefit’s POREfessional pore-minimizing primer.

Yeah, I don’t know what to do with that either, but it’s tough to pass up a SpyGal comic — “She’s smooth! She’s sexy! She’s your secret weapon against pores!” — by Phil Noto and James Asmus, available beginning this month at Benefit counters. Come on, it’s Phil Noto!

“SpyGal is a dynamic, nuanced hero for a new generation,” Marvel’s John Dokes said in a statement, “and combining that with the unparalleled storytelling of Marvel brings fans one of the most unique comics they’ll read all year.”